Nationality and Borders Bill

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 7th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I am sorry, but I am going to put a two-minute limit on speeches. I know that will not be popular, but I will not get everyone in anyway. I am sure that our next speaker, who will be the last on three minutes, will try to stick to two.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

I will do my very best, Madam Deputy Speaker. I rise to speak to new clause 44 on safe and legal routes, which is tabled in my name, and new clauses 15 to 17 on a statutory limit on immigration detention, which I tabled with the hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller). I pay tribute to him for his work on the issue.

New clause 44 goes to the heart of the Bill’s supposed objectives, which are predicated on stopping irregular arrivals of asylum seekers by encouraging those fleeing war and persecution to access safe and legal routes. However, the Afghan citizens resettlement scheme announced as urgent in August is still not operational, the Syrian scheme has closed, the gateway scheme is not operational and the UK resettlement scheme that opened in February with a commitment to resettle 5,000 people in year one has taken just 770 people. It is a cruel deceit to say that the Bill’s measures encourage the use of safe and legal routes if we have no such meaningful routes.

There is much in the Bill to be concerned about, such as differentiation of refugees in contravention of international law, offshoring of processing claims away from protection, pushing back rubber dinghies and risking lives. Importantly, the Government’s own impact assessment says that the evidence base for such measures is “limited” and that they

“could encourage…cohorts to attempt riskier means of entering the UK.”

However, that is all justified in the name of encouraging safe and legal routes. The Government must face up to their responsibility and deliver those routes.

On new clauses 15 to 17, we are seeking to place a statutory limit on immigration detention and to respond to a missed opportunity in this Bill. I was the vice-chair of a cross-party inquiry over eight months in 2014, with parliamentarians from both sides of the House and all main parties—there were more Government Members than there were Opposition Members—as well as a retired Law Lord, a former chief inspector of prisons and, of course, the hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire. Our recommendations, which included the limit on detention contained in new clauses 15 to 17, were endorsed by this House in September 2014, so it is disappointing that we are still debating them seven years on.

This is not a particularly controversial proposal. We are unusual in this country in having no limit. During our inquiry, we spoke to a young man who had been trafficked from the Cameroon-Nigeria border. He had been beaten, raped and tortured, and he had made an irregular route to this country on a false passport. He had been detained for three years in contravention of the stated aims of the Home Office that those who have been trafficked should not be detained, that those who have been tortured should not be detained and that detention should be for the shortest possible period. Time and again, we were told that detention was worse than prison, because in prison someone knows when they will get out, but that sense of hopelessness and despair leads to hugely deteriorating mental health.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. I am sorry, but time is up.